In August 2008, a
Countrywide employee engaged in a scheme to steal confidential
customer information from Countrywide. An investigation found that
the employee gained access to data from 2.4 million
loan customers, and sold this information to unknown third
parties for the whopping amount of $70,000. [Less
than 3 cents each Bob] Countrywide sent notification
letters to affected customers and offered two years worth of free
credit monitoring.

Countrywide was
hit with several class action lawsuits as a result of this data
breach. The lawsuits were consolidated and eventually settled.
Holmes and some members of his proposed class objected to the
settlement which the court approved, notwithstanding the objections.
Eventually, Holmes and Stiers (and their spouses) filed their own
non-class complaint against Countrywide. One of the plaintiffs
purchased credit monitoring services. The other expended sums for
changing their telephone numbers due to the increased volume of
telemarketing calls they received.

Standing: The
court says that plaintiffs have standing under Sixth Circuit law
(also citing to Krottner v. Starbucks). The credit monitoring and
money spent to change the telephone number were sufficient to satisfy
injury for Article III standing purposes.

Given how data breach cases have fared
in the courts, I’m not sure why plaintiffs keep bringing them if
they don’t have a stronger case showing unreimbursed financial harm
or other compensable injury. It may not seem fair or just that you
can’t recover for time spent monitoring your credit, etc., but
unless Congress changes some laws, the only ones who stand to benefit
from these cases are lawyers.

Justice
Dept., FBI to review use of forensic evidence in thousands of cases

The Justice Department and the FBI have
launched a review of thousands of criminal cases to determine whether
any defendants were wrongly convicted or deserve a new trial because
of flawed forensic evidence, officials said Tuesday.

The undertaking is the largest
post-conviction review ever done by the FBI. It will include cases
conducted by all FBI Laboratory hair and fiber examiners since at
least 1985 and may reach earlier if records are available, people
familiar with the process said.

… The review comes after The
Washington Post reported in April that Justice
Department officials had known for years that flawed forensic work
might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people but
had not performed a thorough review of the cases. In addition,
prosecutors did not notify defendants or their attorneys even in many
cases they knew were troubled.

Many forensic techniques developed in
crime labs to aid investigators, and research into their limits or
scientific validity was never a priority. Except for DNA, no method
has been shown to be able to consistently and accurately link a piece
of evidence to an individual or single source.

"Tasmania's police force has
taken the unusual step of asking the public to stop
alerting it to every 'abusive or harassing' comment posted to
Facebook or other social media sites. The force said it was
'increasingly receiving complaints' about material posted to the
sites, but sought to clarify that 'the use of technology to undertake
some conduct does not in itself create an offense.'"

[From the article:

"If the conduct complained of
would not amount to an offence if it occurred off-line, then it is
not an offence simply because in a particular instance it was
undertaken with the aid of digital technology," the department
noted.

Put this on your (electronic) bookshelf
next to the Marine Anti-Social Guide...

With the emergence of social
media, information sharing continues to be dynamic and evolving.
Social media is a global cultural phenomenon, and for many Americans
it has become such a part of their daily activities they can’t
imagine living without Facebook
or Twitter. According to
comScore, a digital
measurement company, one out of every six minutes
spent online is on a social network, and 73 percent of
the U.S. Internet population visits Facebook
each month. Social media is not only a great avenue for staying
connected with family and friends; it is also a great tool for
sharing the overall Air Force story and the stories of our Airmen.
The Air Force Public Affairs Agency created this guide to help all
Airmen safely and wisely use social media. This guide provides
simple, easy-to-follow tips to help you use social media tools in
your professional and personal life. This guide is for
informational purposes only and does not replace official Air Force
instructions."

Sabrina I. Pacifici's
comprehensive current awareness guide focuses on leveraging a
selected but wide range of reliable, topical, predominantly free
websites and resources. The goal is to support an
effective research process to search, discover, access, monitor,
analyze and review current and historical data, news, reports and
profiles on companies, markets, countries, people and issues, from a
national and a global perspective. Sabrina's guide is a
"best of the Web" resource that encompasses search
engines, portals, databases, alerts, data archives, publisher
specific services and applications. All of her recommendations are
accompanied by links to trusted content targeted sources that are
produced by top media and publishing companies, business,
government, academia and NGOs.

WWWD (What Would Warren Do) Is Warren
using the old Boston Consulting Group matrix or is that just the
reporters spin?

"Alan D. Mutter writes that
with a 50% drop in newspaper advertising since 2005, the
old ways of running a newspaper can no longer succeed so
most publishers are faced with choosing the best
possible strategy going-forward for their mature but declining
businesses: farm it, feed it, or milk it. Warren Buffett is
farming it and recently bucked the widespread pessimism about the
future of newspapers by buying
63 titles from Media General and is concentrating on small and
medium papers in defensible markets, while steering clear of metro
markets, where costs are high and competition is fierce. 'I do not
have any secret sauce,' says Buffett. 'There are still 1,400 daily
papers in the United States. The nice thing
about it is that somebody
can think about the best answer and we can copy him. [A
strategy to emulate! Bob] Two or three years
from now, you'll see a much better-defined pattern of operations
online and in print by papers.' Advance Publications is milking it
by cutting
staff and reducing print publication to three days a week at the New
Orleans Times-Picayune, thus making the Crescent City the largest
American metropolis to be deprived of a daily dose of wood fiber in
its news diet. Once dismantled, the local
reporting infrastructure in communities like New Orleans will almost
certainly never be rebuilt.'By cutting staff to a bare minimum and
printing only on the days it is profitable to do so, publishers can
milk considerable sums from their franchises until the day these
once-indomitable cash cows go dry.' Rupert Murdoch is feeding it as
he spins his newspapers out of News Corp. and into a separate company
empowered
to innovate the traditional publishing businesses into the
future. In various interviews after announcing the planned spinoff,
Murdoch promised to launch the new company with no debt and ample
cash to aggressively pursue digital publishing opportunities across a
variety of platforms. 'If the spinoff materializes in anywhere near
the way Murdoch is spinning it, however, it could turn out to be a
model for iterating the way forward for newspapers.'"

Links

About Me

I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.